Welcome to Cold War Gamer, a blog I am using to record my Cold War wargaming projects. These range from fictitious Cold War hot projects to historical conflicts that took place around the globe throughout the Cold War era, all modelled and gamed in 20mm. The blog includes links to various resources useful to the Cold War Gamer.

Tuesday, 12 June 2012

Review - Books, The Military Balance

The Military Balance has been published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies since 1959. The Publication divides the world into geographical regions and major political alliances then analysis by country the armed forces this includes strategic nuclear assets, army, navy airforce and any paramilitary organisation at the level of numbers of major units, numbers of major equipments, numbers of personal. Major units vary depending on the size of the army, for the larger forces divisions by type for smaller armies brigades and battalions.

For NATO and Warsaw pact countries it allows you to identify the major equipments used for smaller countries it is potentially more useful as the smaller numbers of equipments can be more easily related to the organisations. It provides a good indication of the equipment owned and is always an excellent starting point for any new modern war-games project.

The books are published annually and there are significant numbers available second hand, which is just as well as the cost of the latest one is generally prohibitive. Second hand they are more reasonable. I have a collection covering a spread of years across the 80's 90's and 00's. Exemplar data can be found here which is indicative of the information published on each country.